It’s that time of the year when major American business schools host information sessions to interact with applicants in India. Here are some tips on how to make best use of these sessions. Read More »

The philosophy department is invading the M.B.A. program—at least at a handful of schools where the legacy of the global financial crisis has sparked efforts to train business students to think beyond the bottom line. Read More »

“My B-school is better than yours.” Soon, students in India will be able to point to several more business school rankings to back up their claims.

Two companies have now started rating business schools in India.

ICRA Ltd., a subsidiary of Moody’s Investor Service, recently announced plans to start grading Indian management institutes. ICRA has so far been approached by fifteen schools and already released gradings of seven schools. Read More »

Surveys are wonderful things. They “reveal” the obvious in a manner that forces us to pay attention.

For instance, we’ve long suspected that India’s educational system is ineffective in giving students the ability to eke out a living. It’s great at mass production of “higher end” professionals (think engineers or doctors), leaves the “lower end” (unskilled labor) to take care of itself, but leaves a gigantic deficit in the middle as anyone knows who has tried to hire foremen, sales guys, plumbers, or middle managers.

Now we have some research to back this up. The 2011 Talent Shortage Survey by Manpower Group found that India’s skill shortage (or “difficulty in filling jobs”) is a staggering 67% – among the highest globally. Read More »

Siddhartha Deb’s latest book, “The Beautiful and the Damned,” paints a picture of present-day India through the stories of five individuals who span the country’s social, economic and geographical gamut.

In India, however, the book will have one chapter missing: that on Arindam Chaudhuri, a businessman and director of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management, a popular privately-run network of management schools.

In an interview with India Real Time, Mr. Deb spoke about his new book and why he decided to center his first chapter around Mr. Chaudhuri. Read More »

There are some “output” parameters that are clear indicators of business school systems and processes. The most important among them, in my view, is the number of papers a school has published in a reputed international journal.

While it is only one aspect of traditional B-school ratings, our analysis shows that publication in reputed journals correlates strongly with industry interface, faculty remuneration, infrastructure and expenditure towards faculty development.

In those schools which scored high on published papers, faculty load, infrastructure and incentives are robustly geared towards research. It is also the key difference that separates B-schools with strong industry links from those that are just teaching colleges.

When C fore analyzed the data of over 200 B-schools over the past five years (data gathered as part of our annual B-school survey) we found that only 23 institutes qualified across the “at least five published papers in five academic years” filter, i.e. from 2004 until 2009.

– Premchand Palety is chief executive of the Centre for Forecasting & Research, or C fore, and a contributing editor for india.wsj.com. Read More »

About India Real Time

India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.